25/05/2022

One of the goals of the establishment of the general repercussion, implemented in 2007, was to reduce the overload of appeal cases in the Supreme Federal Court (STF), as well as increase legal security by allowing similar cases to have the same solution. After 15 years, and having undergone several improvements, the system has contributed to a significant reduction in the Court's caseload, which today totals 11,400 appeal cases, compared to 118,700 in December 2007.

Aiming to promote debate on constitutional and procedural measures relating to the general repercussion (RG), the Supreme Court holds, from today (25) to Friday (27), the seminar "General Repercussion 15 years: origins and prospects". The idea is to encourage discussions that will enable the model to be improved, as well as to mark a period of learning, during which the STF built, collectively, the system of general repercussion.

The president of the STF, Justice Luiz Fux, considers that the actions of the full court were decisive to the success of the mechanism, both in the construction of case law and in implementing regulatory and administrative changes, such as the creation of the General Repercussion Centre and, subsequently, the Precedent Management Office.

He points out that the importance of the RG is not only in reducing the caseload. "The general repercussion is much more than numbers. It has made the Supreme Court judge more and better, deciding important issues for the country," he said.

Crisis of the RE

Several solutions to the overload of appeals have been devised since the first half of the 20th century to solve the so-called "Crisis of the RE", i.e. the accumulation of repetitive cases. Alternatives emerged such as the implementation of relevance filters to select the appeals to be examined by the Supreme Court and the creation of courts to deal with Nonconstitutional issues, such as the Federal Court of Appeals in the 1946 Constitution (the embryo of today's Federal Regional Courts) and the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) in the 1988 Constitution.

Judiciary Reform

Starting with Constitutional Amendment (EC) 45/2004, constitutional issues raised in extraordinary appeals must have general repercussions in order to be analyzed by the STF. The requirement that the issue discussed in the appeal be relevant from an economic, political, social or legal standpoint and that it transcends the interests of the parties involved is intended to re-establish the paradigmatic nature of the Supreme Court's decisions, making it possible for the thesis adopted in a RE to be applied in the resolution of similar cases.

The mechanism standardizes constitutional interpretation and binds its application to the other instances, preventing the Court from deciding multiple identical cases on the same constitutional issue. Another relevant aspect is legal security since the decisions of all instances of the Judiciary Branch on a given matter become uniform.

Implementation

Regulated by Law 11,418/2006, which altered the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC) of 1973, the general repercussion was effectively implemented at the STF after an objection to the interlocutory appeal (AI) 664567, raised by Justice Sepúlveda Pertence (retired). At that time, the Court internally regulated the constitutional and legal change, establishing the first requirements for the new process filtering system, through Regulatory Amendment (ER) 21, published in 2007. The matter is now addressed by Law 13.105/2015 (new CPC) and by the Internal Regulations of the STF.

Virtual en banc Supreme Federal Court

Over these 15 years, the system of the RG has had several improvements. The first was the creation of the Virtual Plenary, in which the justices would preliminarily judge the admissibility of the appeals, i.e. whether there is general repercussion or not, before holding the trial on the merits.

In 2010, with the Regulatory Amendment (ER) 42/2010, the system underwent a new evolution, making it possible to judge the merits, exclusively for the re-affirmation of case law. In 2020, with ER 53/2020, it became authorized the judgment on the merits of any RE in a virtual environment. With ER/54, a new form of precedent management was instituted, expanding the attribution of the Presidency of the STF to submit to the panel the topics of general repercussion.

Another relevant procedural change introduced by ER 54/2020 was that it allows the absence of a general repercussion for a concrete case, in which the rapporteur may not admit, by means of a monocratic decision, extraordinary appeals that are not relevant from a constitutional standpoint.

Management of Precedents

Currently, the preliminary analysis of REs is carried out by the president of the STF, with the support of the Precedent Management Office, which identifies relevant matters and checks for appeals filed after the deadline, repetitive appeals and appeals with Nonconstitutional matters, reducing considerably the distribution of repetitive cases or cases with procedural flaws to the justices. One of the stages of this analysis uses the Victor artificial intelligence tool, which performs an initial classification of the cases.

PR/EH - FB/LV

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